Food delivery business Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) has bolstered its financial firepower after announcing a successful €1.1 billion (£970 million) bond offering.

The FTSE 100 company said the fresh funds will be used for ‘general corporate purposes’ and, intriguingly, provide firepower to ‘act on strategic opportunities which may arise’. The additional debt saw Just Eat Takeaway.com’s stock slide 1.5% to £82.84.

GROWTH OVER PROFIT

The news follows Just Eat Takeaway.com’s recent fourth quarter update, where it noted expectations for full year revenues to be slightly above market expectations but adjusted EBITDA to fall short of forecasts, with the latter due to hefty investment in the business to grab market share.

‘Just Eat Takeaway.com’s made its investment intentions clear at its recent fourth quarter update, around sacrificing margin for market share gains (including in the UK), and this fundraise simply aims to help accelerate this strategy’, said Megabuyte analyst Rob Warensjo.

LINKING EUROPE AND US

Just Eat Takeaway.com is Europe’s largest food delivery business and it has gone on to raise €700 million (€400 million equity, €300 million in convertible bonds) since the merger of the UK Just Eat and Dutch Takeaway.com businesses. It is currently in the process of acquiring US-listed Grubhub, which is expected to close in the first half of 2021.

Just Eat Takeaway.com’s fundraise marks the second sizeable bond offering in the UK digital platforms space in a month following the £150 million bond offering by Trainline (TRN) on 7 January.

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Issue Date: 02 Feb 2021